The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 4 eBook

I was honoured yesterday with your lordship’s
card, with the notification of the additional honour
of my being elected an honourary member of the Society
of the Antiquaries of Scotland;(415) a grace, my lord,
that I receive with the respect and gratitude due
to so valuable a distinction; and for which I must
beg leave, through your lordship’s favour, to
offer my most sincere and humble thanks to that learned
and respectable Society. My very particular
thanks are still due to your lordship, who, in remembrance
of ancient partiality, have been pleased, at the hazard
of your own judgment, to favour an old humble servant,
who can only receive honour from, but can reflect
none on, the Society into which your lordship and your
associates have condescended to adopt him. In
my best days, my lord, I never could pretend to more
than having flitted over some flowers of knowledge.
Now worn out and near the end of my course, I can
Only be a broken monument to prove that the Society
of the Antiquaries of Scotland are zealous to preserve
even the least valuable remains of a former age, and
to recompense all who have contributed their mite
towards illustrating our common island. I am,
etc.

(414) Now first printed.

(415) The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
had been formed at Edinburgh in the preceding December,
when the Earl of Buchan was elected president.-E.

I was very intimate, Sir, with the last Lord Finlater
when he was Lord Deskford. We became acquainted
at Rome on our travels, and though during his illness
and long residence in Scotland, we had no intercourse,
I had the honour of seeing him sometimes during his
last visit to England; but I am an entire stranger
to the anecdote relative to my father and Sir William
Windham. I have asked my brother, who was much
more conversant in the scenes of that time, for I
was abroad when Sir William died, and returned to
England but about six months before my father’s
retirement, so that having been at school and at Cambridge,
or in my infancy, during Sir Robert’s administration,
the little I retain from him was picked up in the
last three years of his life, which is an answer,
Sir, to your inquiries why, among other reasons, I
have always declined writing his life; for I could
in reality say but little on my own knowledge; and
yet should have the air of being good authority, at
least better than I should truly be. My brother,
Sir Edward, who is eleven years older than I am, never
heard of your anecdote. I may add, that latterly
I lived in great intimacy with the Marchioness of
Blandford, Sir William’s widow, who died but
a year and a half ago at Sheepe, here in my neighbourhood;
and with Lady Suffolk, who could not but be well acquainted
with the history of those times from her long residence
at court, and with whom, for the last five or six years